Words, words, words

[Serial_Apologist]

I've got to take issue with you there S_A. Take just one example, "The splendour falls on castle walls" to realise just what an exceptionally musically poetic language English is when from the pen of a master. That image can't help but capitvate the imagination with a sense of chivalric, arthurian romance. The failings, where they exist, have to be with the translators or the original subject matter, rather than the English language per se.

Yes, images in poetry can provide a wonderful analogy, as are allegations of organicism in music. They all attempt the impossibility of expressing oneness with some natural order through grids predicated on distinctions. That beautiful tree over there "possesses" its qualities by virtue of linguistic attributes; poetic language merely plays around with the rules, like a clever composer who uses timing to circumvent expectation or switches key in an unexpected direction does with musical rules.

[Serial_Apologist]

Apart from the difficulty of providing good translations that retain both metre and sense in songs, there is another problem which is the deracination from the cultural resonances in the music. For instance, take a couple of examples, Schubert's Der Wanderer an den Mond set to a poem by Seidl, and Schumann's In der Fremde from the Liederkreis op 39 cycle set to a poem by Eichendorff. In the Schubert, the second verse "Ich wandre fremd von Land zu Land,/So heimatlos, so unbekannt;/Berg auf, Berg ab, Wald ein, Wald aus,/Doch bin ich nirgend, ach! zu Haus." can of course be translated well but singing it in English will immediately dull the resonances of German romanticism, the evocation of Caspar David Friedrich paintings or Jean Paul stories and perhaps give the song the unwanted association of orienteering in the Highlands. And the same problem applies (even more so) to the words of In der Fremde with the references to an almost apocalyptic sky and that untranslatable term Waldeinsamkeit. The fact is, you are not just translating the words of a song, you are translating a whole culture.

I'm thinking my way as I follow this thread, but it always strikes me that performers of spoken poetry with musical accompaniment are expecting a lot from audiences. The listener is in effect asked instantaneously to relate through two or even three different processes of intellectual response. It now occurs to me that Schoenberg may have reached similar conclusions when he eventually plumped for his Sprechsgesang compromise between speech and singing when he set Guiraud's poems to music in Pierrot Lunaire.

I am now wondering how kids relate to rapping in the club environments which obviously provide their significant sense of community. Brought up on the mixture of the classical art song and various forms of pop vocal in which music fuses words into its own domain, I find it near-impossible to pick up the meaning of rap lyrics recited at too fast a pace for me in everchanging street vernaculars, and normally resort to hearing rap lyrics as one specific sound element foregrounded against another.

If off topic - sorry! - sometimes different perspectives serve to throw light on matters of interest.

[MrGongGong]

Interesting stuff S-A

Some of the Jazz Poetry examples on that thread are (IMV) perfect examples of why it's a BAD (not in a Hip Hop sense) idea
but Pierrot Lunaire is an example of why it CAN be a good idea

as is this IMV

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KnGNOiFll4

[Serial_Apologist]

Interesting stuff S-A

Some of the Jazz Poetry examples on that thread are (IMV) perfect examples of why it's a BAD (not in a Hip Hop sense) idea
but Pierrot Lunaire is an example of why it CAN be a good idea

as is this IMV

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KnGNOiFll4

Thanks GG - Good innit! High time I started looking into this stuff more.

Apologies to everyone else for highjacking this thread. Back to all those "problematic" translations... with my best wishes!

[ardcarp]

Wagner, famously, moaned about a French singing version of his Tannhäuser: "Haven't you got a better word for love than amour?" he asked.

Went to a performance of Die Meistersinger, or should I say The Mastersingers, in English at Sadlers Wells once. Hans Sachs had been taken ill so they flew in a German one who sang his part.... in German. The odd thing is that it didn't make any difference.

[Bert Coules]

The odd thing is that it didn't make any difference.

I'd like to think that it would have made a difference for me: I've experienced this several times at the Coli and it always has.

It works the other way round as well. I recall a newspaper review of a Les Troyens (in French) at Covent Garden at which Janet Baker was a last-minute stand-in (in English). The critic wrote of how her first words were greeted by an "unaccustomed thrill of comprehension which rippled around the auditorium".

Bert

[JFLL]

.... the sheer beauty of certain languages, particularly well-spoken Italian, (but not English imv, and certainly not German!) .....

Oh, I can't let that go, serial! All languages are beautiful when spoken (and sung) properly, and the superficially less attractive ones (to English people who don't know them well), like, say, German, Russian and Hungarian, even more so. To be honest, Italian seems to me all mouth and no trousers, so to speak.

[gurnemanz]

It never really happens nowadays but I do think there is something to be said for singing your own language. I first came across some classic examples of this on Keith Hardwick's 78rpm transfer box that came out on LP in 1982 (later also on CD). Plunkett Greene's Leiermann in English, was a knockout, also Lev Sibiriakov in Russian. Here's his Russian "Aufenthalt":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFrhaqOeEzI

As well as hearing the singers producing sounds that come naturally to them, you also get a new perspective on the song... which can certainly be said of this French Erlkönig with orchestra and three voices, including a boy treble with some piquant French nasal twangs as the doomed child, and a smooth, seductive tenor as the Erlkönig:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6WFRrtDKGY

Chaliapin adds some dark Russian melodrama and an outrageous last low note to "Death and the Maiden".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJBZfj4Rigw

[Chris Newman]

I'd like to think that it would have made a difference for me: I've experienced this several times at the Coli and it always has.

It works the other way round as well. I recall a newspaper review of a Les Troyens (in French) at Covent Garden at which Janet Baker was a last-minute stand-in (in English). The critic wrote of how her first words were greeted by an "unaccustomed thrill of comprehension which rippled around the auditorium".

Bert

I treasure the memory of that night, Bert, which happily is available on CD or as a download from sunny California on the Opera Depot label:

http://operadepot.com

[Bert Coules]

Gurnemanz, do you (or does anyone) know of a recording of Erlkönig in English? I've never come across one.

Chris, thanks for that information. My own most vivid Trojans recollection, though nothing to do with language, is from the night Alberto Remedios stood in for Jon Vickers (the show was by then being sung in English throughout, a rare moment of dramatic sanity from the Royal Opera House). The staging had Aeneas' sailors loading up his ship while he sang his "To Italy" aria from downstage centre: Remedios, who evidently hadn't seen the production before he stepped onto the stage, looked around for the most commanding position for the big solo and decided it was halfway up the long, sloping, narrow gangplank. His composure was admirable when he turned to sweep off at the end and found a long patient queue of heavily laden sailors neatly lined up, stretching from where he was standing to way off in the wings.

Bert

[gurnemanz]

Gurnemanz, do you (or does anyone) know of a recording of Erlkönig in English? I've never come across one.
Bert

Hello Bert,
Thanks for the prompt. I found a YouTube clip featuring a powerful version from the great Lawrence Tibbett in resonant baritone, live + orchestra, including some nice characterisation of the boy and the erlking. Worth a listen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wtd0Bq1utwc

[Chris Newman]

Whilst we are in the mood for Lawrence Tibbett here is his superbly terrifying version of Carl Loewe's Edward

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luSR1VqPfLA

Be warned: there is a long pause before the music begins. It is worth the wait though.